Shipping overseas suspended due to cyber attacks.

[exxos]

I'm starting to consider taking my store off-line again until all these problems are sorted out. It has been almost a month now and Royal mail are just recirculating the same messages making it sound like they are making progress but I honestly think while they are undoubtedly trying, I don't think they have actually made much progress doing anything. The guy at the post office today mentioned they are not even collecting parcels only un-tracked overseas letters.

Even though currently we are accepting UK orders. I would have to block all overseas countries from ordering which would unfortunately entail reprogramming the web store again for basically a one-off situation. But the problem is with that, people overseas will likely try and shove their address into the checkout and select UK because their country isn't listed and try and order anyway. In which case it would all end in a total mess because the postage costs will not be correct.. Then it ends up in messing around with hundreds of emails cancelling and redoing orders etc. just is not worth the time and effort.

There is no point continuing to take overseas orders because at some point people will start complaining and blaming me because their package has not been delivered. Again I just do not want the hassle. It's not like I can wave a magic wand and fix these problems for people.

Even considering using alternative couriers, postage calculations would all be out. I would end up having to do 100s of emails in sorting it all out with people. It could easily add £25+ onto postage prices, plus all the hassle of all the paperwork I would have to deal with as well. But despite all that,I have no way to take custom payments any more anyway.

However I look at it I can just see it all ending in disaster. I really don't have the time or the energy to start messing around with new postal systems. So my only easy option is to simply take the store off-line for the time being. It will not be done right away, but I would suggest anyone in the UK who is thinking of doing a order to do it soon.

EDIT:

I have disabled all overseas addresses in the main store other than UK for the time being.

[sporniket]

I'm starting to consider taking my store off-line again until all these problems are sorted out.

I thought you had to refrain from doing that to avoid google dereferencing your shop ?

[exxos]

I thought you had to refrain from doing that to avoid google dereferencing your shop ?

ah yes, no.. sorry I meant take the checkout part of the store offline. But yes, thanks for the reminder. If I take the shop offline, it screws up google hits. Ironically I got a notification earlier saying they finally passed the indexing of my store.. from like 3+ months ago . Still don't see my store items on google. :roll:

[exxos]

I have been looking into alternative couriers , but long story short is, it is rather problematic and its looking like it is just not going to be possible to do :(

Currently with Royal mail everything basically goes as a " small packet" so sizes of the package are all pretty uniform and somewhat irrelevant. The weight of the packages dynamically calculated in the web store on checkout. Obviously the destination countries selected by the user. So using this information I do I look up to my own pricelist in my database to get the correct postage price and charge the customer on checkout.

The problem with all other companies is they basically do not have such a pricelist. Every single parcel would have to be manually calculated to work out the postage cost. Which would basically mean the user has already completed the checkout and paid for the order. Which would then mean I would need a auxiliary system to charge the user a second time for the postage which is some "indeterminate amount". Likely people won't be happy if they get charged £80 for a package but there is basically no way for me to know the postage costs upfront to present to the user like there is now.

There could be some alternative way that users place the order, then postage costs are worked out as more of a quotation type thing where then they are sent a link to pay. But this is getting into a major rewrite of my store (again!) and ultimately create more work for everybody :( Even if that did go ahead of the people would probably not pay for the order half the time, which then means I have to return items to stock which can only be done manually. Again it is a lot more work.

I would have to create more advanced tools for maintaining my store which I really don't want to start another programming project this year. It is would be more cost-effective to close my store and just not bother. It is not like I am making vast amounts of money from selling all these items in the first place, I generally only make a loss on things. So generating massive amounts of more unpaid work is not something I really want to do anymore.

So unless anyone has any suggestions for shipping companies which actually have a price lists like Royal mail and do not charge the earth.. I'm afraid there's just nothing I can do to fix this problem. It is unfortunately just "wait it out" until Royal mail fix their systems which could be anywhere between now and never.

[Steve]

FYI I purchased a royal mail international delivery for a small parcel I sent to someone yesterday (online pre-paid) Took it to the post office to hand in and they refused just blankly turning me away - I sat in my car for a few moments as the logic of the situation didn't make any sense - "why would they allow me to buy such a service online, only today, to refuse me at the counter?" - so then I checked the royal mail website, and as of the 30th of Jan they are accepting letters and small parcels, also from businesses. I went back in and told them, they accepted the parcel making some stupid excuse that they didn't realise what I wanted or something. But yeah, as far as I know you should be OK now.

[exxos]

@Steve Was it sent tracked and has tracking actually done anything ?

As far as I understand it they are accepting parcels if you pay for them online, but they are still just sat at the post office as they are not actually collecting them yet.

[Steve]

I'll let you know when the tracking updates, I only just dropped it off. FYI here is the update from royal mail's website:

we have resumed our International Tracked services to all destinations for business customers and consumers buying postage online. This includes parcel, large letter and letter formats of these services. Online shipping solutions have been enabled to allow customers to select these services, print labels and send items from 30 January.

Delivery of International Tracked items posted from Monday 30 January may take slightly longer than usual and customers may notice slightly different tracking information as items leave the UK.

Source: https://www.royalmail.com/international ... t-bulletin

[exxos]

I'll let you know when the tracking updates, I only just dropped it off. FYI here is the update from royal mail's website:

Cool.

[exxos]

I have been looking at solutions all day again. Ironically shipping to USA in particular seems to be a lot cheaper than what Royal mail are charging. Like literally half the price and that is including collection from us :shock:

Hopefully Royal mail can the post office part working soon because that is what my girlfriend uses to post store items. She only has a label printer cannot do stuff online.I also think doing stuff online will potentially harm post office branches.

System I am looking at has a API interface which I have connected to today with some hacky test scripts. It actually offers various couriers because trans-global are basically a broker. But I really like the idea of prices being lower and updated in real-time. Of course this would entail another significance store rewrite which becoming a yearly event it seems :roll:

Problems is with that system is the amount of people who do not enter their address correctly. So we cannot pass the destination address automatically for packages all in one go. Even though script wise it is certainly possible to automate the whole thing. So "human intervention" is still required :roll: . But it is possible to workaround that and book packages manually, but like I said before, its mostly USA people who mess it up. So we would charge a small amount to do all the fixing. But overall, the postage price would be half the price than what is is now anyway.

Certainly a lot to setting up a new system. This is not going to happen overnight and could literally be next year before I have the motivation to start reprogramming the store yet again. But hopefully Royal mail can get gear over the next couple of weeks so we can start shipping again normally.

[Steve]

Hmm, about people not entering their address properly... This might be hard to implement, but on some sites they default to an address search function that fills out all their postal details properly. Then there is an 'edit' function if required. I wonder if that's something you could get.